Wednesday, 27 January 2010

In the papers today, we learn that in a new book on Pope John Paul II, entitled Why He Is a Saint, Vatican official Monsignor Slawomir Oder reveals that the late Pontiff used to regularly whip himself as penitence. It is thought that the revelation will help boost his claim to sainthood:

"In his closet, among his vestments, there was hung on a clothes hanger a particular kind of belt which he used as a whip," Oder writes.

Kinky.

Update: Which had me thinking, what other methods might get you bumped up the Saintly pecking order?

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comments:

Don't they ever step back and think "How on earth did we decide that whipping yourself is a sign of holiness? We must have got things badly wrong to have ended up believing this. Cuh! What are we like?"

So the guy lived in a palace surrounded by servants, promoted the spread of HIV in Africa, ignored widespread child abuse, and should be considered holy because he made his himself uncomfortable. Sometimes. Catholicism really is a nasty sect. It makes Scientology look almost cuddly.